In 1973, David Leveraux is a Flavorist-In-Training testing a new artificial sweetener – “Sweetness #9”. He notices unusual side effects in the lab animals, but fails to blow the whistle. Years later, Sweetness #9 is America’s most popular sweetener and David’s family is displaying the same behavior as the lab animals. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David’s failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?

This crime novel is James Ellroy at his best. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, a Japanese family is discovered dead in their home. The investigation becomes a political storm that throws together and rips apart four members of the LAPD. A Kirkus starred review and one of Vulture’s 57 Books to Read This Fall.

Emily St. John Mandel – Station ElevenBooks on Tape, read by Kirsten Potter

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. A Kirkus starred review, LibraryReads pick, and one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month.

Distraught by a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, the hero of this novel leaves New York to take an unusual job in a strange desert metropolis. In a Dubai at the height of its self-invention as a futuristic Shangri-La, our protagonist struggles with his new position as the “family officer” of the capricious and very rich Batros family. And he struggles, even more helplessly, with the “doghouse,” a seemingly inescapable condition of culpability in which he feels himself constantly trapped–even if he’s just going to the bathroom, or reading e-mail, or scuba diving. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and selected as one of Publisher’s Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2014

Mean Girls meets the Perks of Being a Wallflower in Andrea Portes’s first young adult novel. Anika Dragomir is the third most popular girl at Pound High School, but inside she knows she’s a freak. She can’t stop thinking about loner Logan McDonough, but he’s off-limits. Will Anika ignore her feelings and keep her social status? Or will she follow her heart and become a pariah? Selected as OverDrive’s Big Library Read for Fall 2014.

Jason Segel, multitalented actor, writer, and musician, teams up with New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Miller for the hilariously frightening middle-grade novel Nightmares!. Charlie Laird hates his new stepmom, her creepy house that his family has moved into, and the nightmares that plague him every night. When his nightmares appear in the real world, Charlie and his friends must face their fears to save their town.

On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn first-born; Joe, whose love of animals makes him the natural heir to his family’s land; Lillian, an angelic child who enters a fairy-tale marriage with a man only she will fully know; Henry, the bookworm who’s not afraid to be different; and Claire, who earns the highest place in her father’s heart. Selected as one of The Most Anticipated Novels of Fall 2014 by Kirkus.

After World War I, an impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her daughter, Frances are obliged to take in lodgers. With the arrival of a modern young couple of the “clerk class,” the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. Little do the Wrays know just how profoundly their new tenants will alter the course of Frances’s life–or, as passions mount and frustration gathers, how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. One of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month, selected as one of The Most Anticipated Novels of Fall 2014 by Kirkus, and one of Huffington Post’s Best Books for Fall 2014.

Acclaimed novelist Meg Wolitzer’s first book for teens explores loss and love. Jam Gallahue is sent to The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic boarding school, to recover from her boyfriend’s death. At The Wooden Barn, a journaling assignment restores the untainted past and reunites Jam with her boyfriend. But there are hidden truths on Jam’s path to reclaim her loss. A starred Kirkus review, selected as one of Publisher’s Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2014, and one of Huffington Post’s Best Books for Fall 2014.

The best-selling author of Sin in the Second City and American Rose is back to tackle Civil War history. In Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy, Abbot tells the spellbinding stories of Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonds, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, and Elizabeth Van Lew. Abbott’s pulse-quickening narrative weaves the adventures of these four forgotten daredevils into the tumultuous landscape of a broken America, evoking a secret world that will surprise even the most avid enthusiasts of Civil War–era history. One of Flavorwire’s 25 Must-Read Books for the Fall and Amazon’s Best Books of the Month.

A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country’s most famous museum of medical oddities.In the narrative spirit of The Devil in the White City,Dr. Mütter’s Marvels interweaves an eye-opening portrait of nineteenth-century medicine with the riveting biography of a man once described as the “P. T. Barnum of the surgery room.” A Kirkus starred review and one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month.

In the tradition of The Power of Habit andThinking, Fast and Slow comes a practical, playful, and endlessly fascinating guide to what we really know about learning and memory today–and how we can apply it to our own lives.

Eighty-six-year-old Betty Halbreich is a true original. A tough broad who could have stepped straight out of Stephen Sondheim’s repertoire, she has spent nearly forty years as the legendary personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, where she works with socialites, stars, and ordinary women off the street. She is trusted by the most discriminating persons–including Hollywood’s top stylists–to tell them what looks best. But Halbreich’s personal transformation from a cosseted young girl to a fearless truth teller is the greatest makeover of her career. One of Amazon’s Best Books of the Month.

Johnson examines unexpected connections between seemingly unrelated fields: how the invention of air-conditioning enabled the largest migration of human beings in the history of the species–to cities such as Dubai or Phoenix, which would otherwise be virtually uninhabitable; how pendulum clocks helped trigger the industrial revolution. Accompanied by a major six-part television series on PBS, How We Got to Now is the story of collaborative networks building the modern world, written in the provocative, informative, and engaging style that has earned Johnson fans around the globe. Selected as one of 10 Nonfiction Books You’ll Be Hearing About This Fall by Kirkus.

Narcissists are everywhere. There are millions of them in the United States alone: entertainers, politicians, business people, your neighbors. Recognizing and understanding them is crucial to your not being overtaken by them, says Jeffrey Kluger, in his provocative new book about this insidious disorder. Highly readable and deeply engaging, this book helps us understand narcissism and narcissists more fully.

A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the amazing cultural innovations of the Italian Renaissance.The Ugly Renaissance is a delightfully debauched tour of the hidden, gritty, real world of the Renaissance that brilliantly explores the extraordinary contradictions behind some of the most celebrated artworks of all time.

What is the secret to a stable marriage? How many gay people are still in the closet? Do we truly live in a postracial society? Has Twitter made us dumber? These are just a few of the questions Christian Rudder answers in Dataclysm, a smart, funny, irreverent look at how we act when we think no one’s looking. One of Vulture’s 57 Books to Read This Fall.

The News Sorority takes us behind the scenes as never before to track Sawyer’s, Couric’s, and Amanpour’s ascendance to the highest ranks of the media elite, showing that the compelling desire to report the news–a drive born of curiosity, empathy, and humanity–must be matched by guts, awesome competitive fervor, and rare strategic savvy. Named one of Flavorwire’s 25 Must-Read Books For the Fall.